Relatively recently, I posted on the question of whether a Bureau de Spank desiring to rely on a practitioner’s dishonesty or other form of conscious wrongdoing must expressly allege it in the charge, and discussed Walter v Council of Queensland Law Society Incorporated (1988) 77 ALR 228 at 234; [1988] HCA 8.  Now, in Legal [...]

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This is a post about David v David [2009] NSWCA 8 (the decision at first instance is at [2007] NSWSC 855). Karl Suleman has been good to professional negligence lawyers.  He procured other Assyrians to invest in excellent sounding supermarket trolley schemes.  ‘Give me $50,000′, he said to one investor, ‘and shopping trolleys will pay [...]

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In Legal Services Commissioner v DJMH [2008] VCAT 2301, Deputy President McNamara’s tribunal ordered the solicitor not to practice before 1 July 2011 for multiple findings of acting in the face of a conflict.  It is unfortunate that the reasons for decision do not allow an understanding of what was alleged.  It had something to [...]

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Issac’s style of legal letter writing is legendary. There are some quite extensive private collections out there. I recall one letter said to have been penned by the man himself which began ‘Dear Sir, you are a petulant lunatic,’ and after some substantive words continued ‘You are a very small cog in a very big [...]

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In Chen v Chan [2008] VSCA 2, President Maxwell and Justice of Appeal Redlich dismissed an application by the appellant for an order enjoining the respondent’s solicitor and counsel from acting in the appeal. The applicant alleged that there had been wrongdoing by the respondent’s lawyers at the trial. In fact that was [...]

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Speaking, as I was in the last post, about AILA’s Geoff Masel lecture series, here is the 2006 lecture, delivered by Tony Scotford of Ebsworth & Ebsworth’s Sydney office. It is yet another contribution to the much talked about but little done about problem of insurer-appointed defence lawyers in liability claims and their potentially [...]

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Here’s a link to a little article on the law relating to the possible conflicts of duties faced by a lawyer retained by a liability insurer to act for its insured in the defence of proceedings against the insured. It discusses 3 English cases:

Brown v Guardian Royal Exchange Assurance;
TSB Bank v Robert Irvin; and
Zurich Professional [...]

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Freshfields used to be Marks & Spencer’s go-to lawyers. Then they fell out of favour a bit. But they were still acting for Marks ‘n’ Sparks on one relatively small contract. A key partner then decided to accept instructions to act for a consortium trying to take over the supermarket chain. If the takeover [...]

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Here’s an interesting case about lawyers, incapacitated clients, paternalism, and the right to be represented. An Alzheimers affected woman hired a beak to oppose a guardianship application brought by her brother. The court appointed another lawyer to act for her, suspecting that the man she professed to want to marry had in fact [...]

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Update, 13 November: Clayton Utz’s take on the case here.
Here’s a long Sydney Morning Herald article about the latest big Chinese wall case, this time not in the context of a law firm, but of Citigroup, an investment bank. Here’s The Age’s shorter version. The case is ASIC v Citigroup Global Markets Australia [...]

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